"We three?" said Wildeve, looking quickly round.

"Yes; you, and I, and she. This is she." He held up the letter and
parcel.

Wildeve took them wonderingly. "I don't quite see what this means,"
he said. "How do you come here? There must be some mistake."

"It will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter.
Lanterns for one." The reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of
tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap.

"Who are you?" said Wildeve, discerning by the candlelight an
obscure rubicundity of person in his companion. "You are the
reddleman I saw on the hill this morning--why, you are the man
who--"

"Please read the letter."

"If you had come from the other one I shouldn't have been surprised,"
murmured Wildeve as he opened the letter and read. His face grew
serious.

TO MR. WILDEVE.

After some thought I have decided once and for all that we
must hold no further communication. The more I consider the
matter the more I am convinced that there must be an end
to our acquaintance. Had you been uniformly faithful to me
throughout these two years you might now have some ground
for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider
what I bore during the period of your desertion, and how I
passively put up with your courtship of another without once
interfering, you will, I think, own that I have a right to
consult my own feelings when you come back to me again. That
these are not what they were towards you may, perhaps, be a
fault in me, but it is one which you can scarcely reproach
me for when you remember how you left me for Thomasin.

The little articles you gave me in the early part of our
friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. They
should rightly have been sent back when I first heard of
your engagement to her.

EUSTACIA

By the time that Wildeve reached her name the blankness with which he
had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification.
"I am made a great fool of, one way and another," he said pettishly.
"Do you know what is in this letter?"

The reddleman hummed a tune.

"Can't you answer me?" asked Wildeve warmly.

"Ru-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman.

Wildeve stood looking on the ground beside Venn's feet, till he
allowed his eyes to travel upwards over Diggory's form, as illuminated
by the candle, to his head and face. "Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I